


when push comes to shove

by goldtracing



Series: the future is a fickle thing, so is the past [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Family Reunions, Hurt/Comfort, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25807099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldtracing/pseuds/goldtracing
Summary: The pain is just so much easier to bare when you’re not alone.Or, an Alternate Universe where Luke doesn’t leave everything behind
Relationships: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Luke Skywalker & Han Solo, Poe Dameron & Leia Organa, Rey & Luke Skywalker
Series: the future is a fickle thing, so is the past [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1815403
Kudos: 8





	when push comes to shove

**Author's Note:**

> So, I can almost say it is clear that I diverted from Canon in multple instances in order to make this work. That is also largely because I don't like some of the character portrayls in the sequels and that will also come to light here.

Time can very really heal wounds. It is a myth, a lie and Luke found that out the hard way. There were those injuries that would fest to later burst open and weep blood and puss. Or they would become hideous scars, tissue and thought that was marred forever. Not to mention the events were a hammer and the setting the emboss and fate didn’t shy away from moulding you into a different form.

Such were the emotional scars of Luke Skywalker, ghastly and distorting. The pain had been a constant companion for so long, that he couldn’t imagine living without it. Ironic, how he was so much like his father in that respect.

That was why when he felt a star-like Force presence along with three other souls fast approaching D’Quar, he inwardly flinched and abruptly ended his meditation. It was useless anyway, since immersing himself in the di-omni depths of the Force hadn’t brought him any peace today. Another testimony to his grandfather’s cruel humour.

Nowadays, his greatest solace was the Force with all its convoluted ways but simultaneously was often painful to touch it. At times he was reminded of Uncle Owen and how his caretaker had often given him a sharp slap on the wrist for some mischief that he had done. But how the blazes could the Force managed to be chiding? It certainly didn’t help that at of present it was commonly murky and that sinking into its warm folds was akin to wading through dense fog.

It used to be so clear even if it was clogged up with darkness. The current state of it reminded him of the answer Yoda had given him upon being asked how the Jedi hadn’t sensed their own impending demise:

“Unclear, the Force was during the last days of the Republic. Clouded our judgment, the Dark Side did.”

Luke had frowned and halted his push-ups in order to continue his insistent prodding: “Wouldn’t you still have been able to figure out you were being tricked?”

The little green master had gentle wacked his shins with his trusty gimmer stick and had lectured his student with a slight edge of bitterness in his voice:

“Crafty, the Emperor was. Knew of his true intentions, nobody did until it was too late.”

Taking an extended pause before continuing, the aged Jedi Grandmaster had used the time to noisily clear his throat, making it apparent that what he was about to say was of uttermost importance.

“Beware, you must be when you finally face him. Let the frail appearance fool you, you should not. Else, your death it shall be”, Luke’s instructor had croaked in that infinitely raspy voice. An understatement on his behalf, as the young Skywalker later learned the hard way.

Years later, he would come to emphasize with his late teacher, having been thoroughly bamboozled himself. He could basically hear Yoda cackling in the afterlife, sadly remarking: “Learn, the young don’t.”

The New Republic was a disease-ridden body, corruption and ignorance having deep roots. Justice was a neigh unobtainable luxury for many, leaving wriggle room for the First Order to fest like a cancer.

Yet it was still better than the tyranny of the Sith Empire.

The sad thing is that they end as soon as you open your eyes; Luke found that out the harsh way upon his rude awakening. When everything he had worked so hard to achieve had been levelled to the ground, his heart had shattered along with all his other childhood dreams.

The New Jedi Temple, with students milling in and out of the buildings daily and the soft hum of the Light Side that permeated the base essence of the place had been his first real home. The farm on Tatooine had been a home, but his mind had always been amongst the star where he ought to be, flying with the aces.

During his time with the Rebellion he had been restless, always on the move like a maturing eelopie, always haunted by his destructive deeds, an uncertain future and who he was. There hadn’t been the time and security to settle down and call a place his true home.

Then, on that fateful night, he had returned to find everything turning to ash as the flames rose higher and higher. Fire hadn’t even been able to burn out the Dark Side that had sullied the place due to the atrocities committed there. Ben had been crueller than Sidious, because he had converted those that he hadn’t slain, while the actual Sith Lord had orchestrated an all-out bloodbath.

Ben was truly Leia’s son in the way he had inherited her intelligence.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, Luke had entertained the idea of hiding himself in the furthermost corner of the galaxy and drowning in his own misery there. But in the end, he had vehemently decided against it. Already, his cataclysm had striking parallels to Yoda’s and he wasn’t going to end his days, wallowing away somewhere cold and wet as his late tutor had. Additionally, he wouldn’t be Luke Skywalker if he didn’t learn from his countless failures and pick himself up when he collapsed, like he had dozens of times before.

Out of that reason he had gone to Leia and Han with a heavy heart, the numbness of loss in his bones and tears in his eyes. The misery had only become explicitly tangible when he had recounted the events to them, telling them of how their son had embraced the Dark-Side.

The words had felt like sand in his throat, filing at his throat and tearing at his vocal cords. Blue eyes had become glassy of Luke had forced himself to relay events as honestly as he could. The shock had only really settled in then, as if speaking of those heinous events was what made them reality.

Truth was of the Light, even if it was as bitter as a Dathomirian Inwan fruit.

Han had left shorty after hearing his long-time friend out, cursing all the way to his starship and up the ramp. Chewie trudged behind him, because wherever Han Solo went, he followed. The Wookie had given the twins a sad look and mournfully howled: “Farewell!”

The former smuggler hadn’t even looked back at them, his wife and his brother in all but blood. Of course, shoot the messenger.

Luke had wanted to run after him, grab by the shoulder and persuade him to stay. It was the part of his innermost self telling him to cling to his loved ones before they would crumble to ash.

But Leia laid a trembling hand on his shoulder before he could storm off.

“Don’t! He needs time. He needs peace to come to terms with it. Running after him will only make matters worse now”, she had rasped, her voice horse from the screaming match she had had with Han prior and her expression one of stone. Even though her mental shields were slammed up – strong and as unmoveable of duracrete – Luke had known his twin too long not to pick up on the tell-tale signs of emotional agony.

Her reaction had surprised Luke. After Alderaan she had become very protective of her loved ones and loathed it when she didn’t know where they were. Nonetheless, despite being hot-headed, she was also a very pragmatic person and could distinguish when it was best to let go.

Years had since passed and Han was still gone, having left them to be further alienated and misunderstood by the larger galaxy. However, Luke and Leia still had each other; they always had each other.

The Jedi Master had been present to comfort his sister when old memories had been resurrected and one of their best guarded secrets had been made public. Vader was their father; it had been laid out to sundry and whole galaxy to spectate over.

He had been by her side in her apartment, holding her tenderly by the shoulder as her anger had made the room shake.

“…It’s unbelievable, how quick all those people abandoned me and jumped to conclusions. As if Darth Vader’s sins run through my veins.

“I was wholly convinced that my fellow Senators knew me and yet as soon as they heard of my true parentage, they forsook me as if I were the greatest blight on the face of the galaxy. Again and again I tried to explain of elegantly as possible that I never even considered that piece of bantha shit a parent and that I would only ever regard the legacy of Breha and Bail Organa – my parents in all but blood – one worth shouldering.

They had raised me for kriff’s sake, and they should be aware that the two of them were nothing less of perfect Alderaani with their democratic stance and the manner they always appealed to justice. But no, those idiots of politicians only hear what they want to!

“Blaming a child for the crimes of their parent is prohibited by our wonderful constitution. What a glorious start to break such a simple rule”, she had ranted with those last words brimming scathing bitterness. All throughout that detailed explanation, her twin brother had listened patiently, finally coming to fully understand the jaded acrimony he had felt on the other side of that one particular Force bond not even a full day prior.

The former princess had then taken a deep breath and the slight diminishment of her fury had made the furniture shake a little less. Then she had continued, and Luke could practically hear the tears in her voice as she had unveiled one of the most painful aspects of the experience, her dainty hands curling into fists as she did so.

“The worst was when the people of New Alderaan denounced me. Amongst them, it is common knowledge just how greatly I suffered at the hands of Darth Vader, more than any other person. They celebrate me like a martyr for that as well as a hero in my own right by because I don’t let that extensive torture define me.

“Our culture even stats that future generations should carry the blame of past errors. They still casted me away, they still shun me now as if doing so is something noble”, she had whispered, eyes glossy with tears neigh on spilling and her whole body shaking from emotional pain of current as well as past days.

She had leaned against him, choking as she coughed out one last sentence:

“They tried to assassinate your reputation as well, the Jedi hero that saved the galaxy…”

It was a shared wound, pain that could never really cease, just dim to a near unnoticeable throb. And still they did their best to bare it with dignity in public.

In privacy, they ease their sorrows and doubts by communicating it to each other, because they both knew that bottling up their emotions was self-destructive. Releasing them into the Force wasn’t a valid method either – it was fitting the symptom and not the root.

At least Leia didn’t wake up screaming anymore from nightmares of a monster turned father ransacking her mind – tearing through recollections of mealtimes with her parents and memories of outings with her aunts with practised ease. Neither did she sob in her sleep anymore and open her eyes to the repeated loop of a jet green beam of energy touching her home and reducing Alderaan to space dust tattooed on the insides of her eyelids.

At least Luke wasn’t automatically catapulted back to an ashen farmstead every time he smelt burned meat, nor did it evoke flashbacks of freshly cauterized lightsabre wounds any more.

Nevertheless, Ben, or Kylo Ren as he now preferred himself to be called, was always a sore topic between the two of them. Luke could never cease to feel a measure of guilt that no amount of talking could over exorcize out of him. It was the questions that would haunt him the early morning hours in the interval between fully asleep and fully awake. 

What if he had been there that night? What if he hadn’t gone to Kashykk? What if he had seen the warning signs of an impending fall from grace and confronted his nephew? What if he had seen Snoke for who he truly was – a manipulative, greedy bastard? What his he had told Ben that Vader was his grandfather? What if…? What if…?

Concluding, it was to no avail to ruminate on the alternate possibilities of the past and forget to live. Simply put, it was far more important to learn from made mistakes and to build a better and brighter future from the acquired knowledge.

Not that it was easy, Leia was fully cognisant when it came to that. It didn’t prevent her heart crying out for her son and accusing her of being so idiotic.

There had been those weeks in the beginning stage when she had desperately tried to contact her son, only for the boy to taunt and rebuke her. Poisonous vitriol had been his answer to her begging for answer, to her begging him to come back to her. Leia then recognized that he was really her son.

Kylo had sneered at his mother, that anger and hopeless desire to be something great palpable in the Force as he had dismissed her. He had called her weak for refusing Vader’s legacy. That had been enough to get a rise out of her and make her spit that if her sire’s legacy was slaughter and misery then she would gladly leave it to lot. Everything she strived to achieve was the antithesis of the late Sith Lord’s achievements after all. The emotions evoked had brought her close to touching the poison-sweet threads of the Dark Side.

The general had wept bitter tear after every futile row.

Self-doubt had bloomed like toxic flowers in wake of those events. Sometimes, she Dark would come to tempt her, weaving into her passion until she almost couldn’t discern it from the other voices in her head and lure her.

During dire times it would whisper to her of how all those around her were fools, and that she was the only one that had the intelligence and vision required for the making of something grand that would last ten thousand years. Persuasively it would coo to her that she was the only one that possessed the wits to bring about a more prosperous future. It tried to convince her that she should burn everything to the ground to that something new and fertile could grow out of the ashes of the old and sullied.

But then she would feel the sun-bring presence of her brother, closer than he had been in decades, and that would give her the strength to chase the shadows away. Such was her resolve then, that the temptations of the Dark motivated her all the more to overcome them, and continue down the path she had elected.

One evening when they were dining together in Luke’s quarters, she had asked out of the blue: “How are you so at peace with Vader being our father? How do you not break under it?”

It had been to unlike her, to not lay some context prior and to build up to the inquiry. Nevertheless, Luke could tell that it was something that had stewed around in her mind for years. Then he couldn’t blame her for throwing all diplomacy out of the window.

Both their nerves had been raw – the consequence of an exhausting day. A failed mission with a few measly survivors limping back to base wasn’t good for the overall moral, especially with the First Order gaining so much clout in the last few years.

The Jedi had paused before replying, using the Force to clear the excess clutter in his mind so that he could come up with a helpful answer. Leia was trying to orientate herself by him. She needed it because her son was becoming evermore like his idol and she was burning with anticipation to learn a new way to cope with that gruelling reality.

So, he stated it aloud: “You’re looking for a way to come to terms with the truth?”

Slowly, she nodded and stated bitterly: “Something that is actually long overdue. It is one of the factors that prevented me from telling Ben the truth.”

Admittance was good, because only if she accepted that she needed a little help would she be ready to receive advice and aid. Else she would just dig her heels in – you can only help a person that on some level wishes to be helped, after all.

“It is complicated”, he begun as he lack-lusterly poked at the grey-gooey nuri-paste that was all what was left of their military rations.

“It all waters down to the fact that Father did what he did because of his own choices. Just like a decided to fall to the Dark, he also chose to step back in the Light.”

He had stared her straight in the eye, blue meeting brown.

“And remember, he didn’t commit all those crimes because he was sadistic and revelled in the thought that he was evil in every way. He always thought he was killing and maiming in the name of the greater good; admitted in a very sick and twisted way.”

Leia had frown at his words, evidently not receiving the answer she had hoped to hear. Resuming shovelling spoonfuls of the disgusting meal in her mouth as if it were honeyed porridge, she had shaken her head in disappointment while she remarked:

“That is why he should also have been held accountable for all his actions. Maybe with granting him a slimmer of grace because he had been manipulated into the position by Sidious but that doesn’t negate that he deserved the consequences of what he did. He did carry a certain level of responsibility for the hardship he caused.”

Sighing heavily, her shoulders had slumped as she had added:

“And he was surprised when you rejected his offer to rule the galaxy by his side directly after cutting off your hand. Really, I will never fully understand why you can still love him.”

“Mainly because you had everything you could wish for in your parents and never yearned for a father that would sweep you off your feet for an adventure.

“But at the end of the day, blood ties only matter so much. We can’t decide who our biological relatives are, but we can decide who we love and cherish as family”, Luke had pointed out.

Then he had abandoned his cutlery and food to lean forward and place a tentative hand on your arm.

“And mark my words, you were already family to me before I even knew that you are my sister”, he had finished off his explanation.

It was comforting to know they would always have the other to turn to.

The Force nudge from Leia which cause excitement to flow unhindered over their bond was what prompted him to get up in the end. His knees protested as he rose from a sitting position and the pain only begun to subside when he was halfway across the base tracking down Leia’s presence.

The open hanger was full of people – droids whistling, sentients shouting, the smell of fuel and engine grease thick and clogging – and because people didn’t get much as a chance to glimpse the esteemed Jedi Master, they began to gawk and whisper.

As much as the hero worship got on his nerves at times, he couldn’t change how he was viewed: Luke Skywalker, destroyer of the Death Star, saviour of the Rebellion – a legend. Legends don’t falter and don’t hurt like ordinary mortals, so the Jedi kept his face in a stasis of pleasantness and his stride purposeful.

By now he was accustomed to the admiration; Leia suffered the same fate because she was regarded as a living myth. Gossip spreads fast so they both did their best to uphold a respectable appearance; at a price.

So, when Luke spotted the Falcon, he could hardly prevent himself from running.

It had been half an eternity since he had last seen the spaceship and far too many years since he had witnessed Han Solo in the flesh descending down its ramp. Chewie was right behind him and the other two passengers that Luke sensed were engaged in an intense conversation as they followed their saviours.

The third one – a young woman – was locked in a firm embrace with Leia, as if they were friends that had been separated for years and not two strangers that had just met. When Luke stretched his awareness in the Force, the actions of the general weren’t so unreasonable as they appeared on first glance.

The presence of the youth was like a pulsating star, full of light and hope and the mutterings of a thousand promises – that rain would come to the desert, that the endless night would give way to dawn. The girl had literally no mental shields, but she made up for that with emotional resilience. It was truly enrapturing to behold her.

As great a distraction as that curious new beacon in the Force was, he still registered movement in the corner of his vision. The Wookie poked his companion, letting out a low bark as he gestured in his direction. There was a rush of movement.

“Luke!”, was the only warning he got before he was locked in a tight embrace, tearing him from his trace and out of his investigation.

The scents of sweat and cheap cologne invaded his senses.

“It’s been far to long, kid. Almost thought I would never see you again”, whispered a rough voice, the vowels spoken with a Mid-Rim accent and the slightest nuance of an Outer Rim one.

They pulled apart, each grasping the elbows of the other as they took in each other’s appearances. The hair was now white and the lines deeper, Luke noted. Besides that, he seemed worn, tired in a way that only being amongst loved ones could remedy.

“So, I’m still the kid to you. And I thought the beard would have put you off from calling me that again”, he bantered good naturedly, a genuine smile finding its way to his lips in the process.

Han took a step back to give him some space, but simultaneously laid a hand on the Jedi’s shoulder, squeezing it.

“No, you’ll always be a dare devil to me, even with what had happened”, the smuggler started, but slightly trailed off at the end and sheepishly scratched the back of his head.

In that moment Luke knew, that while it would be a fantastic day, there would be a lot of emotional baggage to deal with.


End file.
